Posts by izogi
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Is there evidence that she has/had an underlying allegiance to NZ First whilst working for the Greens? That was 15+ years ago, after all. The political landscape was very different in the 90s, including for the Greens and NZ First. Sometimes people just change their minds about things, and sometimes parties and the people in them change, too.
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I'm completely unsurprised that, with Dunne's withdrawal, the Greens have re-entered Tane Woodley as a candidate in Ohariu.
I am quite taken aback at the amount of people in the comment threads who are expressing disgust at the Greens for running a candidate in an electorate they'll not win, accusing the greens of splitting O'Connor's vote, labelling this as a desperate hope to win an electorate because they're under the threshold, etc etc.
I know the tone of Stuff comment threads are largely dependent on a combination of whoever's stuck on the overnight moderation shift, and whichever sewer blog (or enlightened forum) happened to link to an article first, but it's almost like nobody reading Stuff has a clue how MMP works.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to ,
I thought it was strange to see that Andy Foster, a sitting Wellington City Councillor since 1992, recently signed up to run as Wellington Central candidate for NZ First. I guess his reasons are his own, but he's been a strong proponent of Wellington's pest control programme. Aside from the brodifacoum bait stations everywhere, that policy's even seen an aerial brodifacoum toxin drop to initially wipe out pests in the Zealandia sanctuary. A very similar aerial brodi drop in Nelson right now, for setting up the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, has certain anti-1080 campaigners in a rage... even though it's more of a general rage against aerial poison than specifically 1080.
A contact of mine recently quizzed Foster on NZ First's 1080 policy. She reckoned he didn't actually know about it, yet upon being told he agreed there needed to be some tidying up of that policy... or something like that. To be honest it's not too surprising you'd not know about NZF's 1080 policy if you wanted to know about its stance on conservation, because the Environment and Conservation policy makes zero mention of it, despite 1080 obviously being a key part of NZ's existing conservation programme. To see the 1080-related policy for NZ First it's necessary to read the Outdoor Recreation policy --- they want hunters to see it but not environmentalists --- yet even that policy is open to interpretation as to exactly what it entails, and says nothing about the immediate moratorium that Prosser's been talking about.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to ,
Yes I think UF picked up at least some of that policy when it ran with Outdoor Recreation New Zealand from 2005. Hunting circles have always been a place where 1080 use is controversial, but even many in those groups are much less concerned than they used to be.
I forgot all about NZ First.
They're seriously going after it, especially Richard Prosser, I guess because in the MMP world a few thousand votes can cross a threshold to another MP. Prosser likes to hang out in Facebook anti- groups like 1080 Eyewitness where he religiously agrees about how terrible 1080 is and rallies their support in favour of an immediate 1080 moratorium to aerial 1080 drops (while we survey the entire landscape and reconsider, etc). Then he goes to the 1080 support forums where he can be seen, seeks out certain specific people whom the anti-1080 brigade hate with a vengeance, and gets into flame wars and insult fests with those people. But it's mostly been a sideshow for that extreme niche audience. Prosser's weird conspiratorial rant at the end of Backbenches, several weeks ago (4m:05s), was an exception to this. He also said plenty in earlier segments of that episode.
So I think NZF is most likely to get anti-1080 votes if they go to anyone useful. I'm sceptical if it'll actually amount to anything, at most token gestures. NZF already has so many bottom lines and none of them mention 1080... probably because there aren't many people out there who really feel that strongly about it either way compared with everything else happening.
(Correction: In my previous comment I typed ETS conference when I meant to type EDS conference [for Environmental Defence Society].)
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to ,
The departure of Dunn opens an opportunity for an anti 1080 champion
How so? Did anyone who dislikes 1080 vote for United Future because of it in recent times? From browsing the various communities, I mostly see anti-1080 crowd backing either Ban1080 or NZ First... but there's been mounting suspicion about whether NZ First is trying to rip them off as gullible voters. That wasn't helped by Dennis O'Rourke declaring a policy at the recent ETS conference which largely contradicts most of what Richard Prosser's been telling them.
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Back to Metiria's problem, the Guardian produced a useful summary of the situation today:
The crime for which this tide of hate would have been proportionate is hard to imagine: in fact, it was spurred by her admission that she committed benefit fraud in the early 90s, a confession she made freely to highlight how hard it was then, and is now, to raise a child as a single parent under New Zealand’s notoriously punitive welfare system.
More than half of all that country’s benefit claimants owe money to their work and income department, in what appears to be a version of Gordon Brown’s working family tax credit overpayments, where you identify the country’s poorest families, pay them slightly more than you intended by a metric you haven’t really explained, then saddle them with a debt they have no hope of repaying. When you get to the point that these debts affect 60% of claimants, this is no longer a glitch in the system: this is the system.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to ,
So it’s all down to the personality of the leader, and some of the other potential MPs. Education for instance, talks about how much money in billions will be added, and how that’s also going to ballence in the books. But there is no indication there is any plan to even review national standards.
This is the sort of problem I've been struggling with for TOP. The leadership's said lots of interesting stuff which I find engaging (plus the odd thing that makes me really mad at them), but there also seem to be big gaps in the written policy.
eg. I care about a variety of things, but one area I care deeply about is Conservation policy. I've repeatedly been referred to TOP's Environment policy, which is packed full of incentive-speak about things like river pollution and climate change, but says virtually nothing about management of 1/3 of the country that's Conservation Estate, nor even mention words like 'pest', 'predator' or 'conservation'. The only vague reference to it is about a $20 border levy for investment in biodiversity and local infrastructure. There's virtually no detail about expected outcomes, costs of administration, or... anything really about what TOP actually wants.
It's not that TOP doesn't care about conservation policy. Geoff Simmons says plenty at random all over the place, but as far as I can tell none of it's clearly written down or formalised. It's just his personality speaking. So if I'm to vote for TOP on that basis, I feel like I'm really just voting on some kind of enthusiasm and trust that the leadership will "do the right thing", whatever that is. Maybe people who choose TOP genuinely only care about the issues on which TOP's defined and announced comprehensive policies, but beyond that I'm not sure how it's different from someone who votes for Labour because they trust Jacinda, or voting for NZF because they trust Winston, which it seems to be trendy to criticise people for.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Personally, I'm just going to do something weird and vote for the party whose policies I most agree with.
That's fine as long as you trust the party of choice to actually follow through and fight for or implement the policies as advertised.
I've found The Spinoff's Policy tool interesting, but mostly in terms of how I used it. It's built around selecting the policies you like after which it'll tell you which party has the most of your favourite policies, but I found myself looking at similar policies from different parties and second-guessing whether I thought that party actually had any genuine intent to push the policy in a way I wanted. eg. I had a strong bias against including much from National in my preferences, even if some appeared consistent with other parties, simply because I feel I'm already aware of how it's treating so many of those stated policies and that's part of the reason I'm really struggling to consider voting for it.
In NZF's case I wonder if many supporters like it for the one or two things they care about (if not simply Winston's attitude), yet strong in the belief that there's no way in hell that NZF will follow through with some of its other policies that those supporters might think are insane.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to linger,
Where do all those NZF supporters go once Winston Peters is eventually gone, anyway? Could the party even survive without him?
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
they lost my vote for ... dumping Metiria
Not that the method should change your view, but do you see it as the Greens having dumped her?
There was obvious internal conflict (esp shown by Graham and Clendon's thing) and maybe that's what you're thinking of, but what I saw was a Greens' leadership that was prepared to stick it out and defend her vigorously in the face of a public that was looking for any random excuse to discredit the party by attacking her, until she decided to leave.
For comparison, when National has problems it tends to be in the context of maybe 50% of the population looking for excuses to bag them, but another 50% looking for excuses to justify why it really doesn't matter. For the Greens it's more like a 85/15 split.